UW Health Non-Physician Observer Request/Job Shadowing Process

The UW Health entities - UW Hospital and Clinics, UW Medical Foundation and UW School of Medicine and Public Health - are committed to providing educational services to the community, and for that reason welcome many non-employees to visit UW Health facilities to learn about the care provided at UW Health and about careers in health care in general.

Visiting Physician Observers

Licensed physicians who are not faculty members of UW School of Medicine and Public Health must coordinate visits through Medical Staff Affairs by emailing Wendy Garcia. Please call (608) 263-6601 with any questions.

Immunization/Vaccination Requirements

All observers and job shadows in a patient care environment will need to provide immunization/vaccination documentation for the following: tuberculosis (TB, within the past 12 months, influenza (between Octobers and March), measles, mumps, rubella, varicella (chicken pox). History of the disease does not satisfy that requirement.

Non-physician Observers

An observer is defined as someone who will observe the work of a UW Health employee for a defined period of time. Observers are subject to the following guideline:

To be an observer at UW Health, an individual must be sponsored by a UW Health manager, director, physician, or vice president.

Those observers 16 and 17 years of age, visiting adult patient care areas, must be sponsored by a clinician.

The decision to agree to sponsor an observer, and the obligations that run with sponsorship, lives wholly with the sponsor.

To request to be an observer, potential observers should contact their sponsor - a UW Health manager, director, physician, or vice president - directly. The sponsor will then complete our sponsor agreement to initiate the approval process. A visual demonstration of the process is below:

Observer On-boarding Age-based Observation Experiences

Completed 8th grade through 15 years of age: Observation in non-patient care area experience

Ages 16 and 17: Observation in non-patient care area experience

Ages 16 and 17: Observation adult patient care area experience (must be sponsored by a clinician)